Catching Up -- Jan 13: ball joint cages and saddle

I'm way behind on this journal, but I'm going to break up the work into chunks to save your sanity.

First I built the cages for the ball joints and mounted my bicycle seat.The carrier layer (hole as big as the ball, as opposed to the retainer plates cut out of wood) of the cages is Delrin donated to me by the shop at work.

Eyestalk bracket and ball joint plates stacked and drilled

Stack of parts for one ball joint, ready for drilling on a drill press

stack of ball joint frame parts
The 3" hole in the gun box forms the final component

Parts for ball joint frame: inner (bolt holding) carrier, outer carrier, outer keeper
The carriers have 3.25" holes in them to let the ball turn freely, the keeper has a chamfered 3.00 inch hole to keep the ball in place

Inner carrier with carriage bolts in place
This will screw to the inside of the gun box, trapping the bolt heads

Tiki Dalek, project tdk, gallifrey one, doctor who, costume, conventions, silliness
closeup of outer plate, aligned to be screwed in place to the gun box. The ball was there to double check the alignment

positioning pin to align the carrier plate.
I drilled 8 holes for each plate, then flipped it and put screws through from the outside

Carrier plate clamped in place to place screws

Carrier plate attached to inside of gun box, inside view

Carrier plate screwed in to inner face of gun box

Completed gun box (with ball joint inner assemblies screwed in place)

Inside view of assembled ball joints

Closeup of assembled plunger arm ball joint

Closeup of assemlbed gun ball joint

Assembled gun box with torch gun and plunger arm

post for bicycle seat
That's a 1/2" pipe threaded into a floor flange. The saddle will just clamp on to the pipe